Book I Read January 23rd, 2022

I wrote a lot and I read a lot and I ate a lot of tofu. Enjoying my days of exaggerated solitude.

False Starts: A Memoir of San Quentin and Other Prisons by Malcolm Braly – A fascinating and readable history of the first half of the author's life. This is fascinating simply as a (seemingly accurate) account of the life of a small time criminal, but Braly is also a perceptive and sympathetic critic of his society and his own circumstance, the injustices and personal failings which led him to waste 25 odd years in state correctional facilities.

The World Elsewhere by Nirmal Verma – Verma was (is? He might still be alive) of Indian descent but he spent much of his life in the communist Czech Republic, and there are shades of the Eastern European short story tradition in his listless narrators, oppressed by shadowy forces and the relentless turmoil of their own mind. Some hit harder than other but basically I thought these were strong.

Wings of Stone by Linda Ty-Casper – An expatriate Filipino returns to his homeland in the days before the ousting of the Marcos regime, attempts to reconcile the mysteries of his own heritage, homeland, purpose. I can't say it was my favorite thing I ever read in this vein, but I didn't hate it neither.

A Man's Head by Simenon – I'm going to stop trying to think up funny lines for these.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond – An exhaustively researched, tragically compelling examination of the ways in which our housing market and laws perpetrate inequality and injustice. I gather everyone read this about 10 years ago but it was worth your time then and if you haven't picked it up it's probably worth your time now. Engaging, fascinating, and horrible.

Anti-Education by Friedrich Nietzsche – A series of lectures the author gave at the beginning of his career attacking the German university system. His essential thesis – that the expansion of education to less capable individuals, along with academia's increasing obsession with minutia, would ruin the ideal of classical education as creating truly thoughtful, cultured individuals, seems indisputable, and looking back some 130 years on one is, as always, impressed with Nietzsche's prophetic powers. Of course, as is always also the case with Nietzsche, once we get beyond diagnosis the entire thrust falls apart into a lot of vague, soaring, dull Teutonic pseudo-poetry. I remember telling my favorite professor that Nietzsche was the best philosopher to read on the can, because he was funny and you could get through him quick, and my mentor replied something to the effect of he was best kept there. Which is mean and not altogether true but it's a little true.

Cathedral of the August Heat by Pierre Clitandre – A tale of the Haitian slums, told in part through myth and legend and in part through the earthy and despairing misadventures of its inhabitant. Vivid, lyrical, horrifying, good.

Not a Crime to be Poor by Peter Edelman – An exhaustive if not exactly narratively fascinating account of the many ways we screw poor people in this country. I knew about a lot of them, but not all!